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48 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 49
Useful
principles
A
s the crises at RTÉ roll on it is clear
they are not merely financial issues
stemming from recent problems of
corporate governance and public
accountability. Their provenance
goes a long way back in the history of the
organisation and extends beyond the unedifying
spectacle of executives and board scrabbling for
plausible deniability. They raise fundamental
questions about the kind of public service
broadcaster RTÉ should and could become.
One historical precedent to this argument is
in 1968, a mere eight years after the station was
founded. Three senior producers — Jack
Dowling, Lelia Doolan and Bob Quinn — resigned
very publicly, declaring that “RTÉ had an
inadequate idea of itself” and publishing the
book ‘Sit Down and Be Counted’. There was a
Late Late Show discussion to debate the issues
raised but their arguments about the danger of
ignoring new technologies, of stifling creative
freedoms and proposals for adopting a more
progressive direction were quickly defused and
discounted.
The last few decades have witnessed an
overall decline in public service broadcasting in
Europe as many national television and radio
stations have been drawn inexorably into
competing with commercial models.
In the early 1980s, the three RAI stations in
Italy found their audience slipping with the
onslaught of Silvio Berlusconi’s private
channels. There were fierce debates inside the
state broadcaster as Berlusconi’s Mediaset
gradually captured more than 50% of the
television audience. Many argued in favour of
replicating commercial formulas— “If you can’t
beat them join them”, while others suggested
that “We should define our dierences as a
public service more strongly, and practice
them”.
The launch of Channel 4 in the UK in 1982
brought significant change as the concept of a
mass audience was discarded in favour of an
Teilifis EiREINVENTION
Reimagine RTÉ looking
o fresh, non-linear
modern nd less
commercial Irish,
nd inernionl,
models including TG4,
Werford Whispers
News, Novara Medi,
TikTok and Insgrm
By Rod Sonemn
address to smaller and more specific niche
audiences. As the country’s first “publisher
broadcaster” it was programmed with
imagination and commitment, bringing genuine
diversity to the anachronistic and calcified
structures of British television. The political and
cultural context for the new station was set by
legislation to “innovate in the form and content
of programmes”, and a remit “to reach new
audiences not catered for elsewhere”.
Although the context of its intervention has
changed entirely, and cannot be replicated in
some nostalgic way, the principles of
reinvention, embracing innovation and risk-
taking could point to a new path for RTÉ.
Fighting powerful commercial sectors on their
own terrain and competing head to head with
their formulaic programmes, repetitive formats
dominated by over-paid star presenters has
been a strategy for failure.
Explaining that this is delivering “what the
public want” is not an adequate argument then
or now: the free market is not democratic or an
index of taste, rather it is a mechanism fulfilling
desires that it has itself manufactured.
The recent revelations about the disastrous
Toy Show the Musical are a clear illustration of
RTÉ’s inability to compete in the commercial
domain.
The old gurd: digitl nd yet liner
The early Chnnel 4
principles of reinvenion,
embrcing innovion nd
risk-king could be helpful
s one poiner o new ph
for RTÉ
Too liner
OPINION
48 February/March 2024 February/March 2024 49
perspectives.
Channel 4’s network of regional workshops
followed, exploring dierent forms of access.
Independent workshops like Northern Visions
in Belfast and Derry Film and Video workshop
produced notable documentaries such as
Mother Ireland and the successful low budget
fiction films like Hush-a-Bye Baby. Democratic
and accountable media is also a guarantor of
independence from government pressure or
interference. Part of the focus should be serving
young people and minority groups’ self-
representation within film and television. A
wider spectrum of political pluralism is
necessary to open debates about the urgent
issues facing the country at this time.
New technologies for recording sound and
images allow direct speech in the public domain
on an instantaneous basis. Communities of
interest and the sounds of life from cities and
villages around the country have the potential
to shift the balance to participatory access and
interactivity by minimising the processes of
mediation.
Public service broadcasting is not to be
confined to the serious and the slow.
Engaging with audiences will release the
creativity in most people. A brief glance at
Instagram and Tik Tok shows that original talent
for filmmaking is out there, it’s just not evenly
marketed or distributed to a wider public.
This is not a matter of rebuilding anachronistic
structures with a greater emphasis on integrity
and public accountability.
RTÉ needs to be independent of commercial
pressures through a new funding model which
would also secure its long-term future in an era
when television advertising revenue is in
decline.
Now is the time for RTÉ to undertake a
fundamental reimagining of its public service
mission in the digital era and to escape the
commercial competitive sphere which is at the
root of many of its current woes.
Rod Stoneman was Chief Executive of the Irish
Film Board until September 2003 and previously
a Deputy Commissioning Editor in the
Independent Film and Video Department for the
first 10 years of Channel 4 Television.
Living in this time of rapid transition to a
digital world it is imperative to rethink and
reinvent RTÉ’s editorial approach as well as
creating a more transparent economy for the
national public service broadcaster.
Linear television viewing has already been
discarded by a younger generation and is fading
fast for the rest of us.
Migrating to the streaming model, we are
coming to terms with life-changing technology.
George Boole, the 19th century Cork
mathematician, has a lot to answer for— he was
responsible for the algebra behind the
algorithms that now curate our taste and
predicate our choices.
Clearly some elements from the traditional
linear viewing will persist in new hybrid digital
television and some programmes, such as news,
sporting events and live music concerts will
continue to be transmitted at a fixed time.
However, other diverse material, from short
pieces linked via social media and YouTube to
new drama and documentary series will be
marketed to be viewed at our convenience.
A dierent identity for RTÉ can emerge from
rethinking the principles of public service
broadcasting on this contemporary basis.
Rather than imitating programming based on
delivering an audience to advertisers, television
and radio can develop new approaches that
reinvent national broadcasting in its most
dynamic dimensions.
TG4 is an example of what a certain level of
protection from commercial forces can achieve in
terms of intelligent and high-quality
documentary-making and award-winning
features.
Commitment to innovation and risk-taking
would create a space where a new generation of
Irish programme-makers can refresh the airwaves
editorially and aesthetically.
A younger generation is already reimagining
versions of arts and politics on social media here
and abroad—Waterford Whispers News, Dust to
Digital, Novara Media— exploring the meaning
of quality and excellence in unexpected ways.
People Make Television, a recent exhibition at
Raven Row gallery in London, laid out the
pioneering work of the BBC Community
Programmes Unit in the 1970s: wide-ranging
programmes made by myriad groups and
A younger generion
is lredy reimgining
versions of rs nd
poliics on socil medi
here nd brod —
Whispers News, Dus o
Digil, Novr Medi—
exploring he mening of
quliy nd excellence in
unexpeced wys’.
Model Northern Visions - Belfst workshop
Novr
Model
Model
Model
